5 Years/Australia Day

Since Noah and Aaron passed way I always felt like getting to five years without them would be a big milestone. When we were in the early days I couldn't imagine ever feeling 'okay' again.  All I could think about was 'Noah and Aaron are dead' no matter what I was doing.  I couldn't think about anything else for years. 

I remember asking once when the 'fog' finally goes, because two years after they passed away I was still doing silly things like driving along and forgetting where I was supposed to be going and forgetting things all the time.  Someone told me that takes about three years and I felt overwhelmed that I still had so long to go until I would feel half normal again.

The last year or so have definitely been a lot easier, and I had thought that getting to five years that I would feel really on top of things and in many ways I am, but I still find that any little bit of stress causes my brain to overload again and I'm back to having the 'brain fog' that I had all the time even a couple of years ago. 

I think that can be one of the most frustrating things at the moment, because I was always so organised and on top of things, and now there are times when I've forgotten things, lost things, am not sure what I'm doing or just feel so overwhelmed and I can't keep thoughts clear in my head. 

It's so frustrating because a lot of the time now I feel pretty good, but then as soon as things get busy the brain fog comes back, and I also have a lot of anxiety which I never used to have.  It's really annoying because a lot of the time I can feel okay, but my heart palpitations are telling me otherwise.

So for me the grief hasn't gone, but it has changed. When we talk about Aaron and Noah it's usually a funny story or talking about them in a happy way.
There aren't a lot of tears anymore, but we suffer grief in other ways.  For me the loneliness is the hardest thing.  My work and boys keep me busy, but I miss having Aaron to talk to about anything and everything. I miss just having that closeness with him where we knew each other so well and balanced each other out so well. I miss 'us' and I have some great friends, and it's hard being the 'third wheel' but I still very much do not want another relationship and do not want to get remarried. 

I hate being single because it means that Aaron isn't here, but I am also very used to being single now, and think that in a lot of ways I've become selfish because it's just myself and the boys now and I don't have to consider someone else.  If I don't want to go out I don't go out. If I don't want to cook tea at a certain time I don't have to. If I want to buy something I just buy it (if I have the money), which is very different when you are married as you have to do things as a team for your relationship to work. 

I think that 5 years sounds like a long time, but also such a short time. It scares me that I've only lived without Aaron for 5 years, and could still have another forty to fifty years on my own.  I don't know how I'll do it because I miss Aaron more and more as time goes on, but I don't have a choice so I just have to try to do it in the best way that I can.

Other anniversaries have been hard, and we have kept very busy to get through it.  Two years after we went back to where we were at when Aaron passed away.  Other years we and have been away in  Sydney for it, and two years ago we were with Dad while he was in palliative care.  This year I knew we would be home for it, and I just knew that it had to be spent at the beach.  I knew that my brother Eden and his family and also a lot of my cousins would be at Hawley Beach for the day, so I decided I wanted to go there as it would be lots of fun with them.  I was so happy that Tim and Helene decided to come along as well.

The morning of Australia Day I asked Kobe if he would empty the dishwasher, while we were getting ready to go to the beach.  He cracked me up as he said 'it's a public holiday Mum!'.  I told him that when he asks me what was for tea, that I would remind him a public holiday.  He had a little laugh about it and I then said 'what do you think we should have for tea on Dad's day anyway?'.  He looked at me and said 'Dad's day!? What do you mean 'Dad's day'?  I said 'Dad died on Australia Day Kobes, so it's like it's his day'.  Kobe looked at me with his mouth open and said 'What!?  Dad died on Australia Day!?'.  He really couldn't believe it and I had no idea that he had forgotten that it happened on Australia Day.

He then decided that Dad would've liked McDonalds and I agreed (as I knew that it was true and that I wouldn't feel like cooking after getting back from the beach). He was excited to get on some Aussie gear for the day. 

Even though there was a little breeze it was a beautiful day at the beach.  It was lovely to catch up with everyone and other friends who we ran into there. There was lots of cricket, swimming (even though the water was freezing!), walking to the island once the tide was out, chatting and (trying to) paddle board.   

My nieces Chloe and Kelsea look sweet and innocent, but the little rats were finding crabs over at the island and putting them down my top! I think it made their day :)

I loved catching up with my cousin Carli who was down from Sydney and she invited us to go along to Ulverstone to the waterslide which she had hired out for an hour.  It was so nice to have so much fun on what can be a hard day.

The lifeguards were pretty easy going (probably because we were a private group) and let us go down side by side. The guys loved doing it and would even go backwards while going side by side.  My cousin Toni took this awesome photo of Harri going down side by side with her husband Jaron.

And this one of me and Kobe.

When we were at the beach my sister in law Steph jokingly asked Kobe if he was going to have lamb for tea for Australia Day. Apparently he then said something like 'don't you know my Dad died on Australia Day!? We are going to Maccas!'.  Oh he makes me laugh.  After the waterslide everyone got takeaway and had a play and tea in the park.

Before getting home we quickly raced Aaron's grave before the sun went down to have a Pepsi there for him.

My lovely friend Simone was so thoughtful and gave us a Hawthorn pillow (which Kobe has since claimed!) and a card which made me laugh as it had a Kangaroo on it for Australia Day and everyone knows how un-Australian he was (when it came to barracking for sporting teams) and he would've thought it was really funny.

I'm glad that this year wasn't as hard as other years and it was so nice to have such a fun day together with family and friends.

Scorching Sydney

We always love visiting my brother Chrish in Sydney and months ago I grabbed some sale flights to go up during summer holidays for a week with my Mum.  We went up a couple of weeks ago and the first thing we did was jump in the car to go to Wet n Wild. We once again bought season passes so that we could go whenever we wanted, as it's just 10 minutes from Chrish's house.  Jalen was not impressed about the boy's pose :)

Chrish had the weekend with us and also took one day off work to hang out which was great.  He came to Wet n Wild with us and Jay jokingly said that he wanted to go on the 'Sky Coaster' which is like a giant swing that you get strapped into and lifted 75 metres above the ground before you pull the chord to let yourself swing back and forth.  Chrish said he would go with him, and within half an hour they had organised it and were getting strapped in ready to go!

My heart was racing watching them being lifted up! There is no way that I could ever do that. This is a video of it just off my iPhone.  I decided not to use my good camera up there - just wanted to enjoy things without having to lug a big camera around too much.  Jay decided he wanted to be the one to pull the chord to make them 'fly' and had to listen to the guy yelling out 'three, two, one, fly!'.

My friend Makayla made a 1 Second Everyday video last year and shared it on Facebook at the end of the year. It shows one second from every day of the the year, and I absolutely loved it so I ended up buying the app so I could do it for this year.  I'm still videoing every day, but with the app you can also make 'freestyle' vidoes where you can add any video and use 1 second from each clip to make a larger video. I had lots of fun over the week capturing videos to put together into larger videos. This is our video of arriving in Sydney and at Wet n Wild.  It's just using my iPhone so the quality isn't great, but I love that you can capture things so quickly and easily.

We loved Wet N Wild a lot more this year as it was so much easier to get in lots of rides. They have changed the system so that every pass has  'tap and play'.  You tap your band on a machine and choose which ride you would like to go on. It then gives you a time to go back (anywhere from 1 minute to an hour and half) and then you know that at time you can go to that ride and get straight on. 

You can only tap for one ride at a time, but in the meantime while you wait you can can go on other rides which have shorter lines, swim in the wave pool, float around the lagoon or have lunch etc. 

We got so many rides in this time because of it and didn't have to wait in lines for any longer than about 10 minutes each time we visited.  One day we went there for an hour and a half and got in about 6 rides including some of the more extreme rides a couple of times.


Jay found one of Chrish's dress up costumes (he and his footy team often dress up for football events) and cracked us up as he put it on and modeled it for us.

Jay and Chrish did their annual bike ride together, which always scares the crap out of me, but it's nice that Jay gets to do it.

On Chrish's day off went went into Circular Quay on the train and caught the ferry to Manly. No trip to Sydney is complete without going to Manly and grabbing lunch. Kobe cracked me up as he looked like a little old man waiting for the train.

Once again there was a cruise ship docked at Circular Quay and it made us wish even more that we could go on a cruise.  The boys kept saying ' I thought we were saving to go on one Mum!' and I told them we need to stop going on holidays to Sydney if we want to go on a cruise! Kobe said 'okay Mum when we get home I'll help you so we don't spend lots of money so we can go'.

It was super windy on the harbour :)

Love this view so much! Sydney is such a pretty city.

Arriving at Manly.

We all grabbed lunch on before walking to Manly Beach. The boys wanted KFC (out of all the things they could've chosen they always choose KFC or McDonalds. Sometimes Kobe will choose sushi) and it was a very new and fancy one where they make the food right in front of you.

It was such a beautiful day. 

There were lots of these signs up the beach but lots of people were swimming and there were lifesavers about, so we thought we would jump in too. 

After we were in the water for about ten minutes the lifeguards got on the speakers and said that it wasn't safe to swim and asked everyone to get out of the water and swim between the flags (which was right up the other end of the beach). We headed up there for a bit but it was actually not as safe as where we were, and it was full of seaweed.  Chrish ended up getting caught in a little rip but was able to get back okay, so we ended up just getting out.  I love the waves and beaches in Sydney but often it's too dangerous to swim and the beaches are closed which isn't much fun.

We grabbed a slurpee for Aaron before jumping back on the ferry. They were always his favourite and he would go to 7Eleven every time he would go to the mainland just to get one. That was before Maccas and Hungry Jacks used to sell frozen drinks though, so I don't think he would be as excited about it anymore.

Before jumping on the train Mum bought an Aboriginal painting at Circular Quay. This is the artist who painted it.

This photo cracks me up with the hands on the hips :)

I only small storage on my iPhone so had to keep deleting things off my phone to take more videos and photos. Somehow I have lost one of my videos I made about going to Manly, but you can still watch it on Instagram here.

It was so hot while we were up there - unbearably hot! Chrish has air conditioning but only in the lounge room, so the first day we were there we went out and bought fans for the bedrooms.  It was really hard to sleep because it was so hot and one day we were there it was the record for the highest temperature overnight. 

The humidity made it worse and a lot of the time I just felt tired because of the heat.  We went to Wet n Wild 5 times while we were there - sometimes for 4 hours and other times just for a couple of hours. Thank goodness it wasn't far from Chrish's house. 

 

My poor chocolate didn't like the heat either! 

On one of the days that it was 42 degrees we thought we would go to Maccas for tea to get away from the heat for a bit, but they didn't have air conditioning! It was even hotter inside the store! We quickly ate and left and then grabbed a slurpee on the way home. 

Some days it was even too hot to want to go to Wet n Wild as we weren't keen on running around to all the rides in the heat, so one day we just went and literally just floated around the lagoon for ages to cool down. 
Another day we decided to go shopping to avoid some of the heat as we knew we would have air conditioning in the car and shops.  We cracked up when we ran into Chrish there who was out and about and delivering (he works for Star Track which is a courier service).

That night we went to a Big Bash cricket game - Sydney Thunder played against Adelaide Strikers. Jay is not a cricket fan so he was happy to stay home and have a quiet night with Chrish's dog Tess with the air conditioning :)

Mum hadn't been to a Big Bash game before as she thought she wouldn't enjoy it, but I knew she would love it as it's a great atmosphere with music and fireworks and it's just a short game.  She wasn't game enough to wear the bucket head though!

Harri was going for Adelaide as that's his team.

This is the video I made of our day shopping and at the cricket. 

Another day we caught the train into the city and had a look around the market and had lunch at Darling Harbour. Jay was excited to go off to take some photos in the city.

Kobe loved the playground at Darling Harbour - especially the water play area.

I love that a video can show so much more than photos.

On our last day Chrish took us to Bondi before flying home.  There was no swimming allowed so we just ended up having a look at all the art, watching some skating and having lunch. It was still so hard to leave. I just love being close to the water so much.  Mum ended up staying with Chrish for an extra week and didn't fly home with us. 

The inauguration for Donald Trump was held the day we left and we couldn't believe what we saw a plane write in the sky - it happened at the same time that a women's rights march was going on in Sydney.  You can see it in the video :)

Jay found this book at the airport bookshop and we had to get a photo as everyone comments that he looks like Troye Sivan now that his hair is longer.

We got home late afternoon and I couldn't wait to get up to the hospital to visit my friend Simone who had a baby boy while we were away. He had to be delivered very quickly by emergency cesarean but all is good now.  His name is Emerson and he is so cute. It was lovely to have a cuddle and hear about his birth. Simone and her husband Simon now have 6 kids and it makes me tired just thinking about it, but she's amazing and so calm and seems to cope with anything! I know he is a very wanted little man and will bring lots of love and joy into their family.

We loved our week in Sydney but were all so happy to be home in our own beds, and away from the heat. I love summer and love it being hot, but I couldn't cope with a scorching summer like they have in Sydney all the time.  Thanks for having us again Chrish! We hope you are enjoying the peace and quiet with us all gone, although I'm sure you must be missing us!